Continuing My Watercolor Painting of the Florence Griswold Museum In Spring

I have continued adding detail to the watercolor painting of the Florence Griswold Museum. There is interesting architectual details in the building that I have added to the painting. As I am painting I step back and look at the painting from a distance to decide if what I have done looks good or not. Most paintings are viewed from a little distance away, not one foot away where I am painting from.

The trees and the daffodils were worked on next. The deciduous trees in early spring have no leaves yet just buds. When the daffodils are in bloom here in Connecticut the trees are usually budding. It's important to have a believable scene so I try to keep things accurate. I should be finishing this painting over the weekend and will post a photo of the final result.
Thanks, P.J. Cook 

Next Step In Painting a Watercolor of the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, CT

 When you compare this stage of the painting with the previous two photos in my last post I have continued darkening values. More details to the building and trees have been painted with my colors: new gamboge, winsor blue, indigo and brown madder. So far I have used just those colors and as you can see many different shades of one color can be made cooler or warmer by adding a little more cool paint or the warmer paint.

The large tree in the foreground is painted with brown madder and indigo. Next I will be adding textures to the tree along with shadows to give it some form. I will continue in this manner covering less and less of the paper as I paint, painting short is the technique.

Check back for the next step in painting a watercolor.

First Steps In Painting a Watercolor of the Florence Griswold Museum

I have picked my color scheme for the watercolor of the Florence Griswold Museum. I want to use all transparent colors so the paper will show through and be more luminescent. My colors are new gamboge, raw sienna, brown madder, indigo, alizarin crimson, winsor red, sepia and winsor blue. I may not use all of these colors in the painting. I used a grey for the sky and the new gamboge for the flowers. I chose grey for the sky because the yellow house will pop more with a grey background. The green is Winsor blue and new gamboge mixed together. At this point I am keeping things loose in the foreground flowers.


I use the new gamboge for the museum and tone down the color with brown madder and raw sienna. I continue using mixtures of indigo, brown madder, winsor blue for the rest of the nuetral shades. I have started adding some of the architectual details on the building and the background trees.

I will continue painting, covering less and less of the painting. This is called painting short. The more glazes used usually means less of the white of the paper will show through and the painting will be less transparent.